by Tom Nolan
Kenneth Millar, that “enigmatic” and “incomprehensible” character, transformed himself into Ross Macdonald, an internationally celebrated author, a “writer’s writer” whose admirers were often more famous than he. Both Millar and Macdonald (as his biographer documented) were underdogs—the former, a poor, emotionally undernourished boy who fought his way up the social ladder to a PhD; the latter, a genre novelist who transcended comparisons with his predecessors to win bestselling status and praise from literary masters.
And, over three decades after Millar’s death, it seemed to at least some of his admirers that for Macdonald, the best might be yet to come.
As Ken Millar said to Paul Nelson in 1976, regarding Dashiell Hammett: “I just feel that there’s a great figure there who hasn’t been adequately defined. But he will be. Sometimes it takes a hundred years for a really good and new kind of writer to get his meaning across.”16
Kenneth Millar, about age four, not long after leaving Vancouver. (Courtesy of Rhea Kirk)
Kennie with relatives, after a year or two in Kitchener. His mother, Annie Moyer Millar, is on the right; to her left is her mother, Veronica Bowman Moyer. (Courtesy of Man V. Carr)
Jack Millar; extreme right, in Kitchener, 1928. The man in front is Ken’s American architect-artisan uncle, Albert Wood. (Courtesy of Mari Shaw)
Ken (second from right) with his talented Wood cousins. (Courtesy of Mari Shaw)
Eleven years old, in the fall of 1927; dessed for his trip to Winnipeg. (Courtesy of Rhean Kirk)
With the Snyder family on the Oxbow farm. (Courtesy of Rhea Kirk)
Kenneth, Margaret, and Linda Milku, on a visit to Kitchener in 1948. The book is Margaret’s The Iron Gates. (Kitchener-Waterloo Record Collection of Photographic Negatives, Dana Porter Library, University of Waterloo)
Doctoral candidate Kenneth Millar at the University of Michigan. (Bentley Historial Library, University of Michigan News and Information Records, Series D Collection)
“John Macdonald” looms out of the posttwar shadows: The Moving Target, 1949.
Raymond Chandler, photographed by Alfred Knopf in Los Angeles, 1940. (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin)
Kenneth Millar, photographed by Alfred Knopf in Los Angeles, 1958. (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin)
The Millars in Kitchener, April, 1955: just before driving back West in “Honeybug.” (Kitchener-Waterloo Record Collection of Photographic Negatives, Dana Porter Library, University of Waterloo)
Michael Rennie as Joe Rogers, the prototype for Lew Archer, in Pursuit’s 1959 dramatization (with Joan Bennett and the young Rip Torn) of Find the Woman. (CBS Photo Archive)
Millar in Hollywood, 1959; looking for Linda. (Regional History Collection, Department of Special Collection, University Libraries, University of Southern California)
Ken and Maggie with Alfred Knopf, at the Santa Barbara Biltmore. (Hal Boucher)
Paul Newman as Lew Harper, 1966. (HARPER © 1966 Warner Bros.)
Photo by Alfred Knopf of Millar; in Knopf’s New York office, 1965. (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin)
Brian Keith as NBC’s Lew Archer, 1975. (© NBC/Globe Photos, Inc. 1975)
Ken and Maggie inspect Peter Graves as Archer, 1974. (Hal Boucher)
Millar/Macdonald protecting grandson Jimmie, by the pool at Hope Ranch; a picture posed for Esquire. (Mike Salisbury)
With Eudora Welty at the Santa Barbara Writers Conferences. (Virginia Kidd)
The Millars at the new Kitchener Library. (Kitchener-Waterloo Record Collection. Dana Porter Library, University of Waterloo)
Kenneth and Margaret Millar in December 1980, the week of their interviews with Diana Cooper-Clark. (Trevor Clark)
* * *
* * *
* * *
PERMISSIONS
Permissions continued from the copyright page.
The extracts (approximately 173 words, pages 107 and 114) from Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, edited by Frank MacShane, are reproduced in North America with kind permission from Grove/Atlantic Inc. © 1981; in the U.K. and Commonwealth countries (excluding Canada) with kind permission of Penguin Books Ltd. (from Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, edited by Frank MacShane, for publication by Hamish Hamilton, 2000), letters of Raymond Chandler copyright © 1981 College Trustees Ltd.; and in non-English language countries with kind permission from College Trustees Ltd. © 1981.
The extracts from Raymond Chandler’s “The King in Yellow” and The Little Sister are reprinted in the United States with kind permission from Alfred A. Knopf; and in the U.K. and Commonwealth countries and in the rest of the world with kind permission from College Trustees Ltd. © 1938 and © 1949.
The extract from Letters: Raymond Chandler and James M. Fox is reprinted throughout the world with kind permission from College Trustees Ltd. © 1978.
Permission to quote from unpublished letters written to Kenneth Millar or others was graciously given by Michael Avallone, Allegra Branson Hoxter (for Anna Branson), Hugh Kenner, Robert Langfelder, Jan la Rue, Maynard MacDonald (for John D. MacDonald), Nicholas MacShane (for Frank MacShane), Otto Penzler, Sam Sandoe (for James Sandoe), Tom Shanks (for H. N. Swanson), Roger Simon, Kathleen Symons (for Julian Symons), Phyllis White (for Anthony Boucher), Morton G. Wurtele, Fred Zackel, and Warren Zevon.
Sentences from an unpublished manuscript by Herb Harker are used by kind permission of Herb Harker.
Correspondence from Saul David, Oscar Dystel, and Marc Jaffe is quoted by kind permission of Bantam Books.
Correspondence from Isabelle Taylor is quoted by kind permission of Doubleday.
Correspondence from Ivan von Auw, Dorothy Olding, and others is quoted by kind permission of Harold Ober Associates.
Excerpts from correspondence with the Harold Ober Agency is published with kind permission of the Princeton University Library.
Correspondence and memos from Alfred A. Knopf, Ash Green, and others at the house of Knopf is quoted by kind permission of the firm of Alfred A. Knopf.
Permissions to quote cited materials from various archives, collections, and libraries has been granted by the University of California, Irvine; University of California, Los Angeles; Boston University; the University of Michigan; Indiana University; Columbia University; the University of Texas at Austin; Princeton University’ the University of Florida; and Brigham Young University.
* * *
* * *
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTERVIEWS
I am grateful to the many who agreed to be interviewed in person or by telephone.
Margaret Millar was not only good enough to speak with me for several hours but allowed me unrestricted access to the Millar Collection at UC Irvine and to whatever other Millar-related material I was able to find.
Donald Ross Pearce, a friend of the Millars’ for thirty years, generously spent many weeks giving me what amounted to a graduate seminar in the personality of Kenneth Millar and the artistry of Ross Macdonald.
Mari Shaw, Bertram Wood, Gardner Wood, Moyer Wood, Paul W. Wood, Maybelle Leeman, Mary Carr, Ruth Gress, Meta Faryon, and Dr. Gordon MacDonald provided much useful information on the family backgrounds of Kenneth and Margaret Millar.
Clay Hall, Mr. and Mrs. Sandy Baird, Margaret (Gretchen) Kalbfleisch Kingsley, Mrs. Sheldon Brubacher, Mr. and Mrs. Cully Schmidt, Stan Stuebing, Sid McLennan and family, Alex Duncan, Warnock Macmillan, Howard Duench, Dorothy Shoemaker, Aleda Snyder Whittemore, Rhea Snyder Kirk, Margaret Jaimet Dobson, Wilbert Hiller, and Mr. and Mrs. Ed Devitt illuminated Ken and Margaret Millar’s Kitchener years.
R. A. D. Ford and Mary Lee recalled Ken Millar’s undergraduate career at the University of Western Ontario.
Anna and Annie Branson, Marianne Meisel, Ralph Raimi, Charlie Miller, Nolan Miller, Georgia Haugh, Warner G. Rice, Donald A. Yates, Laurence Goldstein, Carlton Wells, and Clean
th Brooks each had things of interest to say about the Millars’ stays in Michigan.
Robert Easton, Donald Davie, Hugh Kenner, Al Stump, Claire Stump, Harris Seed, Eleanor Van Cott, Lydia Freeman, Lucille Smith, Herb Harker, Jerre Lloyd, Ted Clymer, Corinne McLuhan, Dick Lid, Betty Lid, Robert Langfelder, Matthew J. Bruccoli, Geoffrey Aggeler, Dennis Lynds, Gayle Lynds, Jackie Coulette, James Pepper, Ralph Sipper, Clifton Fadiman, Bob Phelps, Betty Phelps, Marsha Neville, W. H. “Ping” Ferry, Warren Zevon, and William Campbell Gault all shed light on the Millars’ decades in Santa Barbara.
Ash Green, Harding Lemay, Stanley Kauffmann, and Pat Knopf spoke of Ross Macdonald’s dealings with the house of Knopf. Saul David, Oscar Dystel, Marc Jaffe, Fred Klein, Esther Margolis, Alan Barnard, Marcia Nasatir, Len Leone, and Lew Satz told of Macdonald’s association with Bantam Books.
Eudora Welty spoke at generous length about Ken Millar over a four-day period in Jackson, Mississippi.
Reynolds Price recalled when he met Ken Millar in Jackson.
Ed Hoch, Michael Avallone, Joe Gores, Roger Simon, Collin Wilcox, Howard Engel, Michael Z. Lewin, Otto Penzler, Dorothy B. Hughes, Robert Wade, Jane Guymon, Pauline (Mrs. James) Fox, Jonathan Kellerman, and Phyllis White (Mrs. Anthony Boucher) described the place Ross Macdonald held among his mystery-writing peers.
Gerald Walker, William Hogan, John Milton, and Digby Diehl spoke as men who had edited or published Millar or Macdonald pieces. Jerry Speir and Peter Wolfe recalled how it was to write books about Macdonald’s fiction. Richard Moore and Arthur Kaye talked of their documentary films about Ross Macdonald. William Goldman told of writing two scripts from Macdonald novels. David Karp discussed the Archer TV series.
Paul Nelson, John Leonard, Ray Sokolov, Dick Adler, Brad Darrach, Charles Champlin, Jerry Tutunjian, Wayne Warga, Trevor Meldal-Johnsen, Robert F. Jones, Dick Lochte, Susan Sheehan, Diane K. Shah, Jon Carrol, Bill Melton, Burt Prelutsky, Mickey Friedman, Bob Gottlieb, Diana Cooper-Clark, Sam Grogg, Jane S. Bakerman, Frances Ring, and Beverly Slopen shared memories of interviewing Ross Macdonald.
Frank MacShane, Jane Bernstein, Nona Balakian, Walter Clemons, and Robert Lescher talked, among other things, about Ken Millar’s visits to New York.
Steven Carter, Linwood Barclay, and William Ruehlmann described their epistolary friendships (and visits) with Ken Millar.
Dr. Ed Peck recounted how Millar/Macdonald lent insight by proxy to an analysand.
Ray B. Browne, George Grella, and Max Byrd addressed the acceptance of Ross Macdonald’s work by the academy.
Julian Symons, H. R. F. Keating, and Matthew Coady remembered the Millars’ visit to England.
Charles Kelley, Jerry Bauer, Star Black, Hal Boucher, Jill Krementz, and Mike Salisbury recalled Ross Macdonald from the photographer’s perspective.
Robertson Davies, Kitty Carlisle Hart, and E. Howard Hunt each responded to a written question.
In addition, several of those named either sent copies of letters from Ken Millar or made it possible to obtain copies of his letters from their archives.
Alice Munro allowed Millar items to be copied from her papers at the University of Calgary.
Osvaldo Soriano of Argentina mailed me articles and reviews he’d written in Spanish about Macdonald, which Don Yates was nice enough to paraphrase in English.
Maynard MacDonald allowed access to correspondence between John D. MacDonald and Kenneth Millar.
Others who answered questions of one sort or another included Robert Weaver, Jonathan Kirsch, Patti Seidenbaum, and Stan Chambers (KTLA).
INSTITIONS
The chief repository of Ross Macdonald source material is the Kenneth and Margaret Millar Collection, in the Department of Special Collections of the University Library at the University of California, Irvine. There this biographer spent many engrossing months examining thousands of letters, notebooks, and other documents written by, sent to, or concerning the Millars. Over a four-year period, I was given extraordinary assistance by the Special Collections staff, particularly by then Head of Special Collections Roger Berry, a person without whom this book could not have been written. I was privileged to receive Mr. Berry’s assistance even after his retirement, as he came in regularly to facilitate my full use of the Millar Collection. Other Special Collections people whose aid I depended upon included Sylvester Klinicke, Irene Wechselberg, and Eddie Yeghiayan. Mr. Berry’s successor, Jackie Dooley, also extended me several courtesies. My very great thanks to all of them, and also to the Friends of the Library, especially Margo Allen.
Ken Millar’s extensive correspondence with the Harold Ober Agency is housed in the Ober Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton University. Thanks to the staff there for facilitating access to this material. I am also grateful to Pat Powell at the Ober Agency in New York.
Millar’s letters to Alfred Knopf and others at the Knopf firm are housed in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. My thanks to Cathy Henderson there.
Letters from Ken Millar to Anthony Boucher (William A. P. White) are in the Anthony Boucher collection at the Lilly Library of Indiana University, where Saundra Taylor was of great assistance.
The University of Michigan holds much material of interest to the Macdonald scholar. Among those guiding me to it were Kathryn L. Beam, in the Special Collections Library of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library; Marjorie Barrett, Nancy A. Bartlett, Marilyn McNitt, and Brian A. Williams at the University’s Bentley Historical Library; Larry Goldstein at the Michigan Quarterly Review; and Tom Hubbard at campus radio station WUOM.
Others who located significant Millar items included Margaret R. Goostray, at Special Collections in the Mugar Memorial Library at Boston University; Howard Prouty at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Beverly Hills, California); Carmen R. Hurff, curator, Rare Books & Manuscripts, University of Florida Libraries; Bernard R. Crystal at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Butler Library at Columbia University; Rita A. Christensen of Special Collections at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University; Jean Geist of the Popular Culture Library of the Jerome Library at Bowling Green State University; and staff at the Department of Special Collections, University Research Library, UCLA.
In Oregon, Mrs. Louise Hill of the Malheur County Historical Society located and sent information regarding the McDonalds and the Millars of Nyssa, Oregon; as did staff at the Malheur County Library.
Other American libraries and archives to whom I am indebted include the Shasta County (California) Historical Society; the El Dorado (California) County Library; the Woodland (California) Public Library; the Santa Barbara Public Library; the Santa Barbara Historical Museum; the Library and Special Collections at the University of California, Santa Barbara; the Los Angeles Public Library; the Pasadena Public Library; the Burbank Public Library; the Glendale Public Library; the Santa Monica Public Library; the Chicago Public Library; the Enoch Pratt Library of Baltimore; the Occidental College Library (California); the New York Public Library; the San Jose State University Library; the Warner Bros. Archive at the School of Cinema and Television at the University of Southern California; the Regional History Center, Department of Special Collections at USC; and the Library of Congress.
Thanks also to Georgia Jones-Davis, then at the Los Angeles Times Book Review.
Sandra Burrows, at the National Library of Canada in Ottawa, was extremely helpful in tracing and verifying John Macdonald Millar’s peripatetic newspaper career; she provided invaluable documentation and suggested further useful avenues of inquiry. Others who found proof of John Millar’s varied activities included Catherine Myhr at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Marilyn Mol at the Athabasca Archives, and staff at the Legislature Library in Alberta, the British Columbia Archives & Records Service, the Chilliwack Museum & Historical Society, the Nicola Valley Archives Association, and the Vancouver Public Library.
Dale Wilson, of Walkerton, Ontario, provided much useful information regarding Millar family activities in that town.
Pablo Machetzki, at the Waterloo County Board of Education, assembled wonderfully notated information about Ken Millar’s school attendance and residences in Kitchener.
Ryan Taylor, Susan J. Hoffman, and other staff at the Kitchener Public Library gave generous assistance.
Documentation of Ken Millar’s attendance at various schools was given by the Medicine Hat Public Schools of Alberta, the Suddaby Public School in Kitchener, the Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate and Vocational School, and by St. John’s-Ravenscourt School’s alumni association and Mr. M. H. Ainley.
Other Canadian libraries and archives that provided aid or resources included the United Church of Canada Archives; Victoria University Archives, Victoria University in the University of Toronto; the University of Western Ontario’s D. B. Weldon Library; the National Library of Canada; the National Archives of Canada; the City of Winnipeg Archives and Records Center; the Winnipeg Public Library; the London (Ontario) Public Libraries; the Bruce County (Ontario) Public Library; the Bruce County (Ontario) Museum & Archives; the Vancouver Maritime Museum; the Manitoba Culture, Heritage and Citizenship Provincial Archives; the Archives of Ontario; the University of Toronto Libraries; the McMasters (University) Library; the University of Waterloo Library and Special Collections; Wilfrid Laurier University; the Canadian Library Association; the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library; and the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.
